Chapter Twenty-One
G alloping in the fading light, Cador crushed the reins in his fists, leaning low over Massen’s back. He could imagine Austol’s nose cracking, could taste the phantom spray of blood as he pummeled the traitorous prick.
Cador didn’t give a shit about Austol’s tearful regret and pleas for mercy.
For forgiveness. Yes, after Jory had raced to find Cador and Delen, afraid that Bryok was up to something sinister, Austol had sought them out himself.
Yes, he’d confessed immediately that Bryok had schemed his own plan without Tas’s knowledge.
Yes, Cador still wanted to smash in Austol’s face.
The four of them rode as hard as their mounts could withstand, Cador in the lead, Delen and Jory on his heels, Austol sniveling behind. Cador and Delen had strapped their short spears to their backs, and the blade of his dagger was snug against his ankle in his boot.
Cador had stopped listening when Austol had told them Bryok had taken Jem south of Rusk to the other harbor before the Cliffs of Glaw. This one was harder to access, the path down the cliffs even steeper, but it was used by fishermen sometimes.
Leaning low over Massen’s neck, he praised his speed, spurring him on with promises of all the carrots Massen could eat if only he’d get Cador there in time.
He didn’t know what Bryok’s plan was aside from kidnapping Jem earlier than Tas had planned.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Jem before it was too late.
Holding him in his arms, safe and alive.
He groaned aloud at the memory of Jem’s horror-struck face amid the pine boughs. The betrayal etched there—honey eyes wide, that pretty mouth agape and trembling. He should have told Jem when he’d had the chance. Confessed it all and gotten Delen to cooperate after.
What a fool he was!
He squinted into the gloaming as they neared the second harbor.
There were signs in the mud of recent activity, but when he peered down the cliff, he saw no one.
But there—a flicker of light from father down the coast. From the Cliffs of Glaw themselves.
A fist around his heart, Cador called to the others and led the way.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Delen shouted.
He wished he could answer. Ahead, he could see torches being lit and held aloft, people on horseback—but where was Jem?
He couldn’t make out faces until Bryok’s familiar sneer turned to him.
At the base of one of the narrow finger cliffs that jutted out, Bryok hopped down from his horse and struck its backside, urging it away.
Bryok opened his arms wide, only wearing his leather vest and trousers like Cador did. “Brother! You’re just in time for the ceremony.”
“Where is he?” Cador didn’t care what the fuck Bryok was talking about. “Jem!”
“I’m here!” Jem’s voice was reedy, carried on the wind.
Relief and fear warred as Cador searched for him. For a moment, he wondered if the voice had been a ghost’s and he was too late after all. Then he saw the movement out on the narrow spit of land, his eyes adjusting to the dark beyond the torchlight.
Gods! Jem stood near the finger’s claw. A step in three directions would be his last. But he lived, and Cador would worship the gods forever if Jem was returned to him safely.
Bryok blocked Cador’s path. Several others still sat on horseback, including Creeda. Cador fought the urge to leap down, shove Bryok out of the way, and grab Jem. He had to stay calm.
He called to Jem, “It’s all right. I’m here now.”
Bryok’s scarred face twisted in the flickering light.
“Say your goodbyes to him, brother. We’re almost ready.
” He looked to the blond woman in a robe like a cleric’s as she drew a circle in the muddy soil.
She’d apprenticed as a healer, Cador thought, vaguely recalling that there’d been some upheaval and whispers that she’d been removed from her studies.
“Hedra, please,” Austol rasped, leaping down from his mount. “It isn’t right. You can’t do this. We can’t.”
She ignored him, heaving a sack and spilling its contents into the circle—long-dead branches of the ruined sevel trees that the newly faithful displayed around the tribute to the gods in Rusk. Cador tasted bile. He’d always found it unnerving though he hadn’t known why. What was this madness?
Slowly, forcing calm, he dismounted, sharing a worried glance with Delen still on her horse.
Cador, Delen, and Jory were outnumbered to be sure.
Austol couldn’t be trusted despite his pleas to Hedra.
Bryok had no spear, which was an advantage.
Creeda could fight, but she wasn’t a hunter.
The other three people with them unfortunately were.
“Ruan, what’s going on?” Cador asked. Ruan and two more hunters Cador had also called friends sat on their nervous mounts. Cador held out his hands. “You know Tas guides us.”
Before Ruan could answer, Bryok growled, “Fuck Tas.”
It shouldn’t have, but it shocked Cador. He felt for an instant like a naive boy, he and Delen always doing their parents’ bidding while Bryok rebelled.
“We’re done waiting,” Bryok spat. The veins in his neck stood out, his hands in fists. Beyond him, Jem was still trapped. Cador forced himself to focus on his brother’s snarled words.
“You and Delen may be content to sit back and wait, but if your children were dying day by day, you would not be so patient.”
Delen said, “But you know we can’t simply demand Ebrenn’s land. We need Neuvella and Gwels as allies.”
“And we will have them!” Bryok’s eyes glinted in the torchlight, his voice rising. “When the queen of Neuvella sees her son’s head atop the Western battlements, she will crush her enemy! Our enemy!”
Cador couldn’t breathe. The vision Bryok’s vow conjured horrified him like nothing else he could imagine. All he could do was cry, “No!” He glimpsed his horror mirrored on Jem’s beautiful face before Bryok stepped closer.
“You and our sister were so determined to do Tas’s bidding as always,” Bryok spat.
“This is still his strategy—I’m only altering it.
If the boy is kidnapped, the queen will surely be worried, yes.
She might join us in battle. Or she might let the clerics convince her to bargain.
You know those holy fuckers will do anything to stay in control.
If she receives the prince’s hand, she might still bow to her enemies for his safe return.
But no mother will see her child’s head and negotiate . ”
“I won’t let that happen,” Cador vowed. “We will find another way.”
“The queen will spill blood for her son,” Creeda agreed.
“The clerics think they know the gods so well. But the gods demand sacrifice. They always have. For too long we denied them. They blighted our sevel trees. Now they blight our children. We will sacrifice a prince of Onan and we will have the war we need. And the gods will cheer us!”
Cador asked Bryok, “Since when do you believe in the gods?”
He shrugged. “I don’t give a fuck. Let them have their delusions.” He didn’t seem to notice or care that his wife’s spine stiffened, Creeda’s jaw clenching, fury blazing in her eyes.
Bryok added, “Hedra says she can preserve the flesh. Let her do her fucking ceremony. What matters is we will return to the mainland with the prince’s head and all the warriors of Ergh, and we will take Ebrenn. Take the sevels and heal our children.”
“Why do you need sevels?” Jem asked.
Cador cringed, wishing Jem would stay silent and forgotten. But now Bryok’s attention was back on him as he growled, “Shut your mouth!”
Austol spoke up. “Our sevel trees died some years ago. We don’t know why, and they won’t grow again.
Some of the children who haven’t cut their teeth on the fruit are stricken with this wasting disease.
My sister. Bryok’s son. Too many others.
The healers are certain sevels are the cause and the cure.
We’ve traded for shipments, but Ebrenn is tightfisted.
It’s not enough. We must control the sevel fields ourselves or the children will always be in danger. ”
Bryok shook with wrath, spittle flying from his lips. “Shut up! He deserves no explanation!”
Jem ignored Bryok, speaking to Austol. “Today, you…” He shook his head, and Cador could see the sorrow of yet another betrayal. Jem breathed deeply. “But why didn’t you ask us for the sevels? They grow so abundantly in Ebrenn. If children are suffering, I know—”
“You know nothing!” Bryok shouted. “If the enemy knows what it is you seek, they will cling to it with their last breath. Even if we submitted to the clerics and let them indoctrinate Ergh, even if they convinced Ebrenn to send ships full of sevels, it wouldn’t be enough.
We must control the growth. We must make that land ours. ”
Jem’s curls whipped around his head in a gust of sea air, the torches flickering violently. Cador longed to touch him, to carry him away from this place.
Jem stood so close to the blackness as he said, “Please. I know my mother. She will—”
“Don’t make it harder for yourself, boy,” Bryok snarled. “Come close and I’ll make it quick.”
“Your mother will avenge your murder,” Creeda added. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain, I swear it.”
“No!” Cador shouted. “I won’t allow it. Never. Never !”
“You didn’t give a damn what happened to him before!
” Bryok’s lip curled in disgust. “But now that you’re fucking that pathetic piece of shit, you value him over your own people?
Over your nephew’s life?” He spat. “And don’t deny it!
I saw you in the forest. Fucking your little toy in the mud.
He doesn’t deserve you, brother. He’s wormed his way into your favor.
Turned you against us! I knew it was time to act. ”
Cador puffed up his chest. “I’d never deny it. Jem’s my husband. I want to fuck him until we’re old and gray. He hasn’t turned me against anyone. He’s—”
“He’s nothing!” Bryok screamed. “What of Hedrok? He can no longer stand. The sickness creeps up his body without mercy. He knows his fate. He knows that all the sevels in the fucking world won’t save him now. He knows it’s too late for him. And you can’t even bother to visit!”
Shame crashed over Cador. He couldn’t deny it. He wouldn’t. “I’m a coward. Seeing him suffer—it’s unbearable.” He should have visited his nephew every damn day. Instead he’d stayed away and tried to think of anything else. “I’m sorry.” He looked between Creeda and Bryok. “Truly, I am.”
Bryok rubbed a hand over his craggy face. Darkness had closed in, the torchlight flickering in shadows. “Even if it’s too late for him, we will protect the unborn children from his fate.”
Creeda insisted, “We don’t know that it’s too late for Hedrok.
He’s eaten many of the sevels you transported back.
It might slow the disease enough. We don’t know!
This is why we must act.” She nodded to Hedra, her thick hair whipping her cheek where the wind tore it loose from a knot.
“Perform the ceremony. I have prayed with all my breath to the gods. Let them bless this sacrifice. Let it be the spark that will guarantee our war. Our salvation!”
“You would sacrifice my husband?” Cador demanded.
“Even if I beg you not to?” He itched to rip his spear from its binding across his back and fight for Jem’s return, but he was too aware of Ruan and the others at the periphery, and how very close Jem was to the edge of the cliffs. Jem needed him to keep his head.
A burst of panicked laughter clawed at Cador’s throat. If he didn’t keep his head, neither would Jem.
Think!
He had to devise a strategy like Tas would, even if it required patience. He watched Jem beyond Bryok, trapped but standing firmly, his jaw set. Even if his knees were shaking, Jem wasn’t letting it show. Cador’s fingers itched to touch him.
Ruan ran a hand over his graying hair in frustration. “Enough of this. You care more for this Southern prince than our children? Impossible. He is spoiled and soft and… expendable .”
Cador nodded. “I thought so too.” He looked to Jem, who watched him with wide eyes. Gaze locked with Jem’s across the chasm, Cador said steadily, “He proved me wrong. He will prove you all wrong.”
He spoke to Bryok. “Let us journey to the mainland now with Jem. We’ll go to Tas and the queen.
We’ll find a way to make this work. If it’s war, then let it be war.
Anything but this.” He beseeched his brother, who he’d tried to please for as long as he could remember drawing breath. Cador held out his hands. “Please.”
The scrape of metal was Cador’s answer as Bryok unsheathed his mighty sword from his back—a blade that finally severed something deep within Cador. He’d never seek Bryok’s approval again. He’d never admire him. It was over.
“Oh, it will be war, brother. Trust me. Neuvella and Gwels will help us take Ebrenn, and then we’ll take it all. Onan will be ours and they will be the ones to suffer!”
Unease plainly rippled through Bryok’s conspirators. Ruan’s lined face drew into deeper creases. “That wasn’t the plan. We need Ebrenn for the sevels. We will take it for the good of Ergh.” He stomped his boot. “ Our land. We don’t need the rest of it. We don’t want it.”
“Why not?” Bryok hissed, gripping his sword.
“Why shouldn’t it be ours? Why should those weaklings keep it?
We can have all of Onan. All their luxuries.
We struggle for every single thing here, battling the snow and ice and darkness.
The endless fucking winters. While they laze in the sun and gorge on more kinds of food than we ever knew existed! ”
Cador exclaimed, “You were the one scorning their luxuries at the Holy Place! Now you want them for yourself?”
“Yes! Why should we toil in the muck for every bite we eat? Why should our children?”
Creeda seethed. “Do not use our children to excuse this greed. I thought you were a righteous man. I thought you battled for our son.”
“I do!” Bryok reached a hand toward her. “This is for him too. For all of our children! If you saw how they lived—how easy it is. You would want this future too. They say the gods banished us—perhaps they did! We will take back what should be ours.”
Creeda shook her head sharply. “We fight for the power to prevent disease. This sickness came after the sevel trees were destroyed and would grow no more. We need the sevels to cure it. We don’t need to conquer the mainland—”
“I will conquer the gods!” Bryok bellowed, spinning toward Jem.
Raising the sword.
Running along the narrow spit of cliff.
Even as Cador burst after him, he knew. Bryok was beyond his reach, his legs always regrettably longer and faster. Jem was trapped and would lose his head in a single swipe of that lethal blade—
The cry of denial tore from Cador’s throat as Jem jumped into the abyss, forever gone in an instant.